


Touch

by ashesandhoney



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:51:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: The Sacred Alteans could bend quintessence to their whims but wielding that much power couldn't be consequence free.Allura loses her sense of touch and has to learn to function without it.A fic with scenes including: nearly bleeding to death, some angst over being the last of a species, fancy ballgowns and space pirates, tickling, sparring practice, Shiro being really into Allura wearing track pants, blow job jokes, quite a bit of pining, Allura glowing, some smut.Written for ahumanintraining for the Shallura Exchange 2017.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thir13enth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/gifts).



### Fading

When she was still a child, Allura had once met a Sacred Altean who had lost his ability to see. Another who had lost her hearing. They were revered. Respected. They had done incredible things and made incredible sacrifices. The Sacred Alteans gave something up when they opened themselves to the magic. The universe washed through them. The universe took something with it on the way back.

The Princess of Altea had never trained.

She was a Sacred Altean. All the signs and portents pointed to the possibility that she was an extremely powerful Sacred Altean but she was a child she didn’t care. She wanted her body to stay as it was. The idea of the flow of quintessence in the universe making off with her sense of sight in return for some magic trick terrified her. It didn’t seem worth it.

And then one day, it had been necessary.

Once it had been easy to avoid the classes and pretend as often as possible that she was just another royal. A genetic gift of some magic perhaps but not the true power of a Sacred Altean. She might learn to fly a Teleduv but she couldn’t work miracles. She wouldn’t work miracles. It had been easy to pretend once upon a time but those of days of ducking away from classes and laughing it all off were behind her now.

Now the choice to use the magic had real consequences. It wasn’t a class or a lecture to avoid. Now it was life and death and the fate of things far larger than herself. She could learn to wield the power or she could watch the Balmora die. She could open herself to the magic or she could let the druids kill her. Other people’s lives, the lives of entire planets hinged on what she did. 

Princess Allura made her choices.

And the universe took its tithe.

It took time. There was no switch to be flicked. It wasn’t as abrupt as on and then off. There was a dimming. Slow but unstoppable. It happened so slowly that she didn't realize it had begun until it was almost finished. It wasn't her vision or her hearing that the flow of quintessence took with it back into the void of the universe.

It wasn't as bad.

It was worse.

It was nothing.

It was everything.

She didn't notice until one day her arm got slashed in a fight and they were back inside the castle before she realized that she was lightheaded. Blood loss. It had ached a little but there hadn't been any pain. It ached the way a bruise might ache.

Pain was the first thing to dim but that wasn’t all of it.

Inch by inch, day by day, with each bit of magic she used, she lost a little more.

In a life where pain was common place in battles and training, it was almost a relief to feel less. But it grew duller and duller until one day she pushed her hair back out of her face in the morning and realized she couldn't feel the strands under her fingers at all.

To be able to feel her clothing against her skin wasn't such a loss, it was easy enough to forget. To not feel the small pains of a stubbed toe or a pinched finger was easy to ignore. It could be worse. A dulled sense of touch was a minor annoyance. She had to learn to recheck her screens because she couldn't rely on her sense of touch to tell her if she'd pushed the button properly. She had to train differently so she didn’t lose the ability to fight.

She was smart. She learned and adapted.

It could have been worse. She told herself as she sat in her bedroom and ran her fingers over the blanket that she knew should have felt soft but really felt like nothing at all. She searched through her memories for the last sensation she could remember. The texture of food? The warmth of her bed? The water in the shower? She couldn’t remember. It could have been weeks since she had last felt anything at all. Maybe yesterday she had still been able to feel echoes of the sensations.

No matter when the last fragments had been lost, it was gone now.

The universe had taken its tithe.

 

### Injury

Shiro scrambled to his feet and pulled her along with him until they leaned against the wall. A pile of crates lay in a scattered heap around them. Allura had been the one to pull him out of the way and they’d crashed through the stack of wood and plastic trying to clear the last of the falling debris from the machinery. The last pieces still hung creaking overhead, threatening to fall.

Once this place had been some kind of factory. The ceiling was high above, lost to darkness and crisscrossed catwalk. Lance had taken the shot that had brought down the many armed monster that had been chasing them. It had fallen through the catwalks and brought the machine down with it. Shiro could see it twitch in the twisted piles but it wasn’t getting up again.

He turned his attention back to Allura. She was bleeding but hadn’t noticed yet. Shiro grabbed her arm and swung her around, forcing her back against the wall because she was going to head back out into the fray if he didn’t. He could hear Keith’s voice but Lance answered it before either of them could. The collapse would have slowed down anything else still chasing them.

The others would be fine for a minute.

But Allura. Shit. Allura was bleeding.

Allura was standing in a pool of her own blood and looking up at the rafters in search of more glowing eyes. Blood poured down her side, staining the white of her flight suit. That wound in her side was going to kill her before they could get her back to the ship if they didn’t stop the bleeding now.

It only took him a moment to fumble through the shock of that much blood before he was sliding his hand into the gap to try and get pressure on the wound. Even through the thick gloves of the suit, it felt wrong. He should have his hand against her ribs and everything was too soft and wet for him to even find those. How badly was she injured?

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“You’re in shock. Stop moving,” he said.

The blood was already oozing between his fingers as he kept the pressure on with one hand and tried to fumble the medical kit open with the other. She looked down at mess of bright red and blinked slowly like she was surprised by it. She stared at him and the red smeared across both their suits. Shiro swore at her and that snapped her back to the moment.

“Give me that,” she said calmly.

He handed over the kit and she pulled out the clotting spray and passed it to him without looking away from the blood pouring down the white of her suit. He looked up at her. Her skin was the wrong shade and her eyes were too wide. She was going to faint but her voice didn’t waver and her hands didn’t shake.

The foam spray filled up the gap in her suit and the blood couldn’t get past it. He pressed it into the gap so that it had a better chance of getting to her skin before it hardened. It should have hurt. He’d had the same stuff used on a gash to his leg a few weeks before and it had burned as it had hardened. Allura didn’t flinch.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes, of course I can,” she said.

Two steps away from the wall and the blood loss hit her. Shiro had to catch her before she landed on the floor. Her head lolled back as he hoisted her up and turned to take her back to the ship. They were both blood streaked by the time they met up with the others at the East entrance.

“Is she dead?” Pidge asked in a small but alarmingly blunt voice. Shiro flinched a little. Danger he had processed. She was hurt. He knew that. He hadn’t let his thoughts get as far as wondering if she was dead.

She could not be dead. 

“I don’t think so but we need to get off this asteroid fast,” Shiro said in the calmest voice he could find. Pidge nodded and shot a look at Lance who said nothing as they took off down the corridor at a run.

She didn’t move. No blinking. No shifting. Through the helmet and the suit, it was impossible to tell if she still had a pulse. Her eyes were shut. Her skin was the wrong colour.

“Don’t you dare do this to me, Allura,” he muttered. “Please.”

 

### Recovery

When she came out of the healing pod, he was waiting for her. His expression was hard and even. He ran a hand through his hair and it fell back into his eyes. He shook it out and crossed his arms tightly over his chest as he watched her. The hospital suit she wore felt inappropriate and she reached for a robe that someone had left nearby to wrap around herself before she could turn to look at him.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Better,” she said.

The worst part of the injury had been how lightheaded she had felt. A bit of nausea still lingered but her heart beat was even and she could think straight. It didn’t hurt any more or less. It had been a serious injury. She hadn’t been able to walk back to the ship on her own and judging by Shiro’s expression, it had been a very serious.

“Coran says that isn’t normal,” he said.

“Bleeding to death? No, typically it isn’t,” she said.

She picked up a tablet from beside the pod to read through her own medical report. She didn’t remember anything after the clotting foam and Shiro snapping at her with a harsh word that her translator hadn’t been able to translate for her. It had been a very serious injury. She read down the report with fear mounting in her chest. It hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid of how close she had come to dying not until she saw her prognosis laid out in a list of numbers and injuries. It was a miracle she had survived it.

“You didn’t react to the wound until you saw it,” Shiro said. His voice pulled her back to the moment. 

“I was distracted.”

“Nobody is distracted from a wound that runs from their sternum through their kidneys. You were almost cut in half. If you hadn’t been moving when it hit you, it would have cut you in half. You came within inches of dying. Literal inches. That isn’t the kind of wound that people can ignore.”

“I didn’t feel it.”

“What?”

She sighed and explained it to him.

He frowned at her throughout the entire explanation. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest and didn’t move as she spoke. Tall and still and dressed in black. Intimidating. She didn’t usually think of humans as intimidating, even him but right now he was setting her on edge. She wanted him to make a joke or ask some naive human question that would take the edge off of admitting all this.

She had never wanted this.

It wasn’t just a matter of admitting that she hadn’t shared the loss of her sense of touch.

On Altea, it was a mark of pride among the Sacred Alteans. They had worked miracles sufficient to pay the tithe. They had bent quintessence to their will. She hadn’t told Coran because she knew he would have said something encouraging and she did not want to be encouraged. It was the sort of thing that was spoken of as an honour. It didn’t feel like an honour. She didn’t want anyone to try and convince her that this was something she should be proud of.

Shiro listened. He was silent and careful and very, very still.

She did move.

 She needed to test out her muscles and make sure she was steady. Healing pods were disorienting. That was an excuse. She wandered the room as she talked because she didn’t want to explain it. It was private. A private loss. Not a point of pride to show the world how powerful she was. It had happened and now she had to live with those choices. This was something she wanted to grieve in her own way, not something she wanted to discuss with a crew full of aliens.

“You can’t feel anything?”

“Not anymore.”

“Hot or cold?”

“No.”

“You never felt that wound?”

“No, Shiro, I didn’t.”

He kept frowning at her. Of course a human wouldn’t think of it as something to proud of but she still hadn’t been braced for judgment. He frowned at her like she had made a bad decision and he wanted to scold her for it. Annoyance spiked and she rolled her shoulders and left the room before she could hear his opinions on the matter.

It wasn’t his problem and it wasn’t his business.

She was alone in her room, attempting to fix her hair before she realized that the frown might have been concern rather than judgment.

 

### Worry

She didn't ask for help. He knew that she wouldn't. He wasn't even sure what he thought she might need. He watched her double check her hands on the touch screens when she stood on the bridge. Calm and collected, lit by that even blue glow of the screens, she was a leader in every way. There was never any hesitation or waver as she worked. No one else was going to notice. She made very sure of that.

Shiro worried about her.

It was enough to have to worry about Keith taking a risk too far or Lance playing the hero and putting himself in danger. He didn’t want more more corner of the team to be on the bring of a disaster. Especially a piece as essential as Allura was.

He couldn’t shake the memory of how she had gone slack in his arms. She had been too still. The wound had been too big. She had come too close to dying and the idea that it could happen to her again kept tugging at his thoughts.

They needed Allura. Allura was at the heart of everything they did. Allura was the one who gave them direction.

Shiro hated the idea that she was still losing things. She had lost her family, her planet, her people. The war that had taken all of that from her was now being waged in her own body. She was losing her senses because she refused to stop fighting for everyone else.

 

### Scans

Shiro kept a closer eye on her when they were on missions after that. He pulled her aside when they got back to the ship and checked her for cuts and bruises and broken bones that she wouldn’t notice on her own. He didn’t explain what she had told him to everyone else. Either he didn’t think it was important or he had sensed her discomfort with the entire thing.

It was quiet. He didn’t discuss it or ask questions or push. He just made sure that her ankle wasn’t broken and any cuts and bruises got bandaged properly. He kept a medi-scanner in his kit soon she got one for herself. It would have been easy enough to run the scan herself but it had become part of the rhythm after they got back.

He would pull her off someplace quiet and make sure she was fine. It was reassuring. It was nice to have someone give her wellbeing their undivided attention like that even if it only lasted a few minutes. It was a few minutes that she was starting to, not look forward to, not quite, but to depend on.

They hadn’t even been out of the lions on this one but they’d gotten thrown around a few times and she wasn’t going to argue when he offered to double check. He finished running the scanner down her body. There were no beeps or alarms. She had escaped again without any broken bones or internal bleeding. Shiro stood back up and shoved the scanner back into his pocket. He stood in front of her.

“Are there treatments?” he asked.

“It’s not an illness,” she said.

“Princess,” he started.

“There’s nothing to be done for it. Quintessence is life force and across the universe, it exists in balance. To play with the balance is to court disaster. That’s why the Galra must be stopped. There is a price to be paid. Those who use too much, for any reason, even a good one, must pay that price,” she said.

“You don’t deserve that,” he said.

“It could be worse,” she said. “If I were blind, I wouldn’t be able to fly and without a pilot for the Teleduv, what would we do? At least this isn’t a problem for anyone but me.”

He sighed.

She started talking before he could say something else, “Thank you for watching over me. You needn’t add more worry. It cannot be fixed with medicine or healing pods. Maybe someday, decades from now, when the war is over and the universe is safe again, I can regain my balance.”

“You can always call me if you need something, anything,” he said.

Allura stopped and looked at him. She had been gathering herself up to step away and go back to work. They were going to have reset the trajectory to get out of this system and on to the location that the Ermili had recommended to them. Her thoughts had already been drifting to the math and the flight plans but Shiro’s expression stopped her.

“I appreciate that, I do,” she said.

His lips twisted and he nodded. She reached up and took his helmet in both hands so that he had to look at her. His expression softened a little but he still looked worried. If the glass hadn’t been in the way, she would have leaned her forehead against his but instead she just closed her eyes and held him there with just those two pieces of glass and a little bit of space between them.

“It’s enough to have you watching over me, Paladin,” she said. “Thank you.”

She left him standing in the hall and went to change her clothes and bury herself in flight trajectories and strategy debates with Coran. Anything to avoid thinking about why she had felt the need to pull Shiro in close like that.


	2. Part Two

### Cruise

The Galra had conquered corners of the empire where people lived peaceful quiet lives because they didn't have anything that Zarkon wanted badly enough to hurt them for. At her less forgiving, Allura thought maybe they just gave Zarkon everything he wanted regardless of who got hurt in the process. If their planet was still intact, what did it matter if everyone else’s was burning?

This ship sailed out of one of those safe corners. A little enclave of planets orbiting a red dwarf star that lived peaceful lives while other corners of the galaxy burned. Allura hated them a little bit on principle. People were dying while they built cruise ships and watched it all happen from a distance.

The cruise ship was absurd. Allura tilted her head back to look at a chandelier high above them that glittered in a myriad of colours. It toed a line between incredible and gaudy as did the rest of the decor. The ship held more than five thousand people. It could circle supernovae without suffering damage. It was a miracle of engineering and people were using it for a week's vacation from their peaceful, war-free lives.

They had been invited aboard by a Galra resistance member who was looking to drum up support among the elites by proving that Voltron was real and wasn't the beacon of chaos that the Galra's propaganda machine liked to paint it as. She had been so enthusiastic about having them along. She had been so sure that this could be a way to motivate her people into doing something about the “trouble” in the empire.

That dramatic galvanization of the political elites was yet to happen.

Allura had been introduced and she had told the story of Altea and Voltron and the new paladins. They had been introduced too, these unusual aliens but no one had particularly cared. Even seeing the Red Lion had been treated as a bit of a party trick. Interesting but not worth much excitement. Everyone had had a glass of wine and continued on with their vacation like it was just another party.

Maybe it was for them. When you didn’t live your lives in danger, it was hard to reach out and do something that might bring the Galra’s attention. Why risk trouble? Why risk your planet? What would she have done if Altea was safe and it was her responsibility to keep it that way? Would she have let the rest of the galaxy burn to protect her corner? She didn’t have an answer and obviously neither did anyone at this event.

So instead they all drank champagne and danced and had a party around a dying star.

At least it was a nice party.

Allura hadn't been to a party like this in more than ten thousand years and it actually felt like it had been that long. She had to remind herself, over and over, that they were there as part of a mission. It was so easy to forget that the entire event had larger implications. She reminded herself over and over again so she didn't get too distracted by enjoying the excuse to buy a new dress or put her hair up in something other than a tight bun. She liked the food and the music and the wide wall of windows that showed the fiery destruction of a giant star.

She had liked the excuse to dress the team up in nice outfits. Pidge had refused a gown but she was pulling off the white suit admirably well. Lance had enjoyed the chance to dress up almost as much as Allura did. He might have taken it a step too far but he fit in well with the rest of the guests who had also taken their fashion choices a step past tasteful. Keith hated the suit but he looked good in it. Hunk was indifferent to the fashion but was having more fun at the party than Keith was. Though it was possible that the dish washing staff in the kitchens were having more fun at the party than Keith was.

It was so easy to slip into the fantasy that this was just a party and everything was well and all they had to worry about was going back to work at the end of the cruise. She turned to look at the exploding star, hanging out there in space like it had been set up for their entertainment. The sheer force of it reminded her that the galaxy wasn’t there for their entertainment.

Shiro appeared at her shoulder and followed her gaze. “It’s dramatic,” he said.

“It’s an ending,” she said.

“All the atoms in the universe come from the hearts of exploding stars, don’t they? It’s a beginning too.”

“That’s poetic.”

“I stole that line. I’m not a poetic person.”

“You could have lied to me,” she said.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he said looking at her.

For a moment, their gazes held. He looked at her with the same intensity he had when he was checking her for broken bones. He was about to say something else but then he shrugged and looked away and just said, “You scare me too much.”

“I am not scary,” she said. She was grateful the moment had passed without making anything awkward. She was grateful. No. She was curious. What had he been about to say? Whatever it was, it had passed unsaid.

“You’re an incredibly powerful Sacred Altean who can wield the life force of the universe like a weapon, beat all our asses, and you don’t feel pain. That’s pretty scary.” 

“And don’t forget that I look good in a ball gown.”

"You do. The dress is nice," Shiro told her.

"Isn't it?" she said with a smile and a little twirl. 

The gown was a a rich purple. Lace and satin. Altean propriety was hard to shake and she had chosen something that didn't leave the marks on her skin visible but the lace sleeves and the channel of lace down the back left the illusion that it was much more risque than it really was. It simmered with constellations of tiny glass beads. It was perfect. It was the prettiest thing she had bought in a very long time. She had matching flowers woven into her hair and even if this was a failure of a mission, it was nice to look this good.

He looked good too. She had kept her itching fingers from dressing him up in Altean colors though the thought had crossed her mind. Instead, he was dressed like a human. He wore the plain sleek black the humans seemed to consider formal wear. White and black. Plain and simple tailoring.

She wanted to dislike the suit on principle. Black was a boring colour for clothing. Shiro had stepped out into the hall as they were preparing to leave and had changed her mind on that.

Black wasn’t so boring.

The cut of the suit managed to make him look taller and he carried himself well in formal wear. He had claimed not to have much experience at fancy parties but he was doing a very good job of fitting in. He wore gloves to hide the metal hand. He was monochrome. Black and white from his boots to his finger tips to the top of his head where his hair was held in place away from his face. He looked different with it slicked back, older in a way that she couldn’t decide if she liked or not.

She took his arm and pulled him a few steps towards the giant windows. She had been planning to say something about the view or the guests at the party. Across the room, she caught sight of Lance leaning in to talk to a woman with blue skin and very long fingers. She pursed her lips at him and Shiro followed her attention across the crowd. 

"He has no off switch, does he?" she said.

Shiro glanced in the direction she was looking and said, "No. He doesn't."

"He's going to accidentally propose marriage. The Hanara have very sensitive social norms," she said.

"I'll go ruin his moment," Shiro said with a sigh.

Allura shook her head and touched one of her communicators. It hummed to life long enough for her to say Lance's name but then it cut out in a snap of static.  She touched it again. She ran her finger along to the single button and tapped that but the reset just gave her another burst of meaningless noise.

She shot an annoyed look at the supernova and tapped the reset again. That should have been enough but it wasn’t doing any good.

"Comms are down," she muttered to Shiro.

She scanned the room, looking for the others. If the comms were down, there had to be a reason. The communication array on the Castle of Lions was massive and the frequencies that the Altean technology used were old fashioned but exceptionally secure. Even supernova strength solar flare activity shouldn't interrupt them, neither would simple distance.

Shiro looked at her and said a single syllable word that mean nothing to her.

She could see Lance frowning at the girl he was trying to romance until Hunk stepped in and grabbed his arm to haul him away. No one was going to understand Hunk's apologies any more than they understood Lance's flirting. Shiro said something else and she took a long slow breath. This was very bad. This was not an unexpectedly strong solar flare.

This was intentional.

Not only were comms down but they had taken translation with them.

They hadn't lost translation when Shiro and Keith had gone into the pocket universe with the Blade of Malmora. They hadn't lost translation after the Castle of Lions had taken a direct hit. They hadn't lost translation when the ship had gotten separated from the lions and trapped in a dimensional loop.

This was bad.

She wasn't sure the paladins had ever needed to stop and consider that they were using translators. They had always just been understood and so they'd never thought about it too much. Translation was built into the suits, into her earrings, into everything. The chips had a radius of nearly a mile. If any of them were within that range of a lion or their helmets or her earrings or the main ship, they would be understood by anyone speaking a sentient language.

Allura asked Shiro a question and he stared back at her with confusion. She took a slow breath and twisted her hand in his shirt sleeve to keep him close and focused on her. They were not going to raise an alarm. No one else had reacted and she was not going to spark a panic. They were the only people relying on translators. The rest of the party spun on speaking mostly Galactic Common. The dialect was different than she remembered but not so radically that she didn't understand most of it.

"It would be best if we had Red leave," Allura said to Shiro.

They'd brought one lion along for the show. The others were all safely parked back at the Castle but Red was down in the hold of a intergalactic cruise ship with 5000 people on it. At least one of those 5000 people knew which frequency to jam to shut down ten thousand year old Altean technology.

Shiro just tilted his head and his lips got a little tighter. He was very good at maintaining his calm. Allura saw Keith headed there way and he did not look nearly as calm.

"Red?"

A tiny head shake. He had no idea what she was talking about.

"Voltron?" she tried.

He answered her but she didn't understand him any more than she understood him. She raised her eyebrows at him. He sighed and nodded.

Yes. He understood Voltron. That word at least hadn't been changed in translation. What were the lions being called in his language? What did their names even mean? Did she know? Did anyone know? When they got communications and translation back on line, she would have to remember to ask.

"Voltron leave," she said gesturing at space and pointing away from the supernova out the window.

Shiro answered her again and the only word she understood was Keith.

"And Pidge, we need someone who can check the tech on the Castle to find out what's causing the problem," she said.

He stared at her for a split second before nodding. He didn't understand her words but he still understood what needed to be done. She gave him a little nudge towards Keith and then headed off in the other direction to find Coran.

 

### Communications

Two hours later, she started to doubt that there had been anything to worry about at all.

Keith had taken Pidge and Coran back to the ship to investigate the issue and they hadn't had any problem leaving. No security. No mysterious guards or broken down technology. They just loaded up into the lion, used the pass card they’d been given when they’d parked and flew away like it was a very fancy parking garage.

Hunk, Lance and Shiro had stayed behind with her to keep up the appearances of rubbing elbows with the dignitaries of the Galran colonial elites. Not that there was any useful liaising or negotiating going on. The humans were useless and her out of practice archaic dialect of Galactic Common wasn't much better. People found her charming but almost unintelligible.

It was probably doing more to sell her story as a 10 000 year old Altean than anything else. She spoke like something from an old entertainment vid and people weren’t shy about pointing it out.

“Did people really used to talk like that? Are you putting it on?” a woman asked.

Allura hadn’t punched her in the face but that was only because Shiro was there to catch her hand and tug her around to look at him. She was irritated and worried and the reminder that she was also ten thousand years from anything she had grown up with grated on her last nerve. The Galra had maintained Galactic Common across their conquered territories but languages never stayed the same.

Allura didn’t like the reminder that there wasn’t anyone left who spoke a language she truly understood. Not just Common. Altean. Common was a changed language. Altean was a dead language. Once, there would have been people at an interplanetary summit like this who spoke at least a little Altean but not any more. There was no one left. Just her and Coran and the AI on the castle ship. That was it.

“Princess,” Shiro said.

A title. The translation of her title into his language. She glanced at him and he said something unintelligible and she nodded. It kept up the appearance that she did actually understand the Paladins even though she didn’t understand a word. His voice was even and calm and she could imagine him telling her to ignore the comment or saying something reassuring.

It wasn’t just them who had lost their translation or comms. Communications were down across the ship but they were orbiting a supernova so no one was particularly concerned.

If it hadn't knocked out translation, Allura would have been more willing to go along with everyone else's easy mood. As it was, she was spinning a wine glass between her hands and worrying about whether she was squeezing it too hard as Lance and Hunk asked her for Altean words to describe different objects. Shiro watched them and finally reached over and pulled the glass out of her hand. He probably said, "You're going to break it," or something similar but she didn't understand it.

"Ok. What's this?" Lance asked.

She told him. Ok was an affirmative expression that they seemed to use as conversation filler. "What's this?" had been easy enough to figure out and she now knew, "Say it again," and how to use "What?" to express confusion. She'd also gotten a collection of nouns. Plate, spoon, glass, table, dress.

By the time the pirates arrived, she'd almost forgotten how worried she had been.

 

### Contact

No one was looking for them. When the pirates had shown up, yelling orders  and waving weaponry around, they hadn’t asked questions about Voltron. They had a list of specific names and they’d pulled those specific people out of the crowd and marched the party guests out of the ballroom and into smaller spaces where it was easier to control the crowd.

Allura hung close to Shiro and did her very best to look scared. As far as disguises went, it wasn’t very good but it was better than nothing and she was going to try and maintain it. There was a good chance that they would assume Shiro was the greater threat and if things went badly being underestimated would be her greatest advantage in the fight.

Shiro caught on quickly. He pulled her in close and kept his arm locked around her back. She gathered up the quintessence and adjusted her body until she lost a few inches of height. She leaned into his side and she was careful about how she scanned the room so she would look like a scared little girl and not someone with combat training.

One of them was going through with a fingerprint scanner and when he scanned Shiro, he glanced at his screen then at his partner and said something that Allura couldn't fully translate but was along the lines of "Above my pay grade," before they moved on.

"Not about us," Allura said.

Shiro answered her but she didn’t understand it. Maybe he was questioning whether the pirates were more likely to be on their side than the guests. Were they rebels or were they thieves? She studied the next one to walk by and while he looked more a criminal with a scar on his face and a crooked grin, it was still hard to shake the possibility that these people might be allies against the Galra.

The pirate caught her looking and the grin tilted a little wider. He leaned down a bit so he was nose to nose with Allura. She had forgotten how short she had made herself until someone was trying to intimidate her.

“Do you like what you see?” he asked in that rolling Common dialect that she was still struggling to understand.

“I do not particularly like what I see, no,” she said in a voice that didn’t fit her frightened body language. She leaned into the stilted diction and formal grammar that the party-goers had mocked her for. The pirate blinked once at her but then the smile was back.

Allura couldn’t feel him touching her. She wasn’t aware that it had happened until Shiro had moved. She hadn’t realized how close he was until his body unbalanced hers. He caught her with one arm as he jerked the pirate’s hand back with his other. The man growled out a swear word but Shiro was talking over him. If her tone had been serious, his was intimidating. He leaned down. The pirate hadn’t had a chance to pull away from his position far too close to Allura.

Shiro’s cheek brushed Allura’s forehead and everything else stuttered to a stop.

He was still talking. The pirate was answering him. Shiro’s voice was cold and flat and the pirate sounded angry. She should probably do something before it became a fight that they couldn’t really afford to have. She couldn’t think straight.

Shiro’s skin was warm against hers.

Just a little bit of accidental contact. Nothing that anyone else would notice.

She noticed.

Quizznak, she noticed.

She hadn’t felt anything in months but she felt this clearly. Smooth and warm and when he spoke, she could feel the way his jaw moved even though it was just the briefest bit of contact.

The pirate moved away without starting a fight and Shiro pulled back again. He was looking after the other man and he looked uncomfortable, like whatever threat he had made left him feeling guilty. A bit of his hair was starting to fall loose from the carefully combed style.

He wasn’t touching her anymore. The sensation didn’t linger. Her body was as it always was as soon as the touch was gone. Cold and distant. She was too aware that her body was a thing she lived in but didn’t fully experience any more. The hint of contact left her disoriented.

Allura shivered hard. Shiro shrugged out of the black jacket he was wearing and wrapped it around her shoulders.  She looked up at him but he was still watching the room. She tried very hard to drag her attention back to the problem at hand. Shiro was probably looking for Lance and Hunk and they needed to be making a plan to leave and to get the innocent party guests to safety.

She knew what she needed to do.

She could not tear her thoughts away from that moment of sensation. Her mind hadn’t held onto the memory with the vivid detail she wanted. So she pushed the memory away. She ignored it.

She made herself pay attention to fact that Lance and Hunk were not in the room. The doors weren’t guarded.

She had been able to feel the way his jaw moved as it formed words.

Once the search party had moved on, there wasn’t anyone to stop them from stepping out into the hall though there was likely someone in the hall to stop them from going farther.

His skin had been so damn warm.

She gave up trying to ignore it.

She pretended that she was just playing the character. She was a frightened girlfriend and this was a part of that. That was all. She put his jacket on properly and when she leaned back into him, she wrapped her arms around his neck instead of his waist. There was no bare skin to touch at his waist and nearness wasn’t enough. She could feel nothing through his shirt or his gloves.

Like this, she could touch the back of his neck. Accidentally. Just the side of her hand against the skin above his collar. She could feel his hair. Running her fingers through it would have been too far over the line. She was still playing a character. He wasn’t hers to stroke and explore. He wouldn’t have appreciated it.

“I’m going to brave sticking my head out the door,” Shiro said.

“Translation is back on line,” she said.

Shiro looked down at her and cracked a grin. She reluctantly dropped a hand from the little bit of accidental contact she had with his skin and reset her earrings. 

“Pidge, can you hear me?” she asked.

“You’re back!” a happy voice crowed in her ear as the comms hummed back to life.

“What happened?”

“They kidnapped a bunch of guys and flew off. It took about three minutes from the time they cut the video feed from the ship’s cameras to the time the shuttle disengaged from the base of the ship. They’re efficient. Keith wants to go after them. Should we go after them?”

“Probably,” Allura said.

She did not sigh aloud. She did not complain. She did not find any other excuses to get her hands on Shiro’s skin as they collected up Hunk and Lance from the next room. She was still wearing Shiro’s jacket when she made it back to the bridge of the Castle of Lions and had to turn all her attention to the mission and put everything else out of her mind.

 

### Artwork

She was standing outside his door, still wearing the ball gown though her hair had started to tumble down around her face. His hand came up and picked one of the flowers out of her hair before his thoughts caught up. He was tired and she had spent so much of the day close to him that he had forgotten that this wasn’t how they usually were. He twirled the flower in his fingers and started to apologize.

“I thought about keeping it but it goes with your outfit,” she said before he could get any words out. She held out his jacket and gave him a smile. He took it and held it in both hands. He needed to say something before she turned around and left.

“It was weird not being able to talk to you,” he said.

“It was. I forget sometimes that you’re speaking another language. All I hear is Altean. You’re language sounds different than I expected,” she said.

“Altean has an awful of vowels,” he said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a beautiful language.”

“Are you going to keep my flower?” she asked.

“Oh sorry. No, you can have it back. It looked like it was going to fall out and I’m stupid tired,” he said.

He hung his jacket over one arm and reached forward to tuck the flower back into her hair and try and fix the tumble of curls. She gave him a smile.

He let himself have an extra moment of pretending it needed adjusted so he could keep his fingers there in the strands of her hair for another few moments. Touching Allura wasn’t allowed. Shiro had a friend who once told a guy in a bar that he wasn’t allowed to touch the art work and if he put his hand on her again, she was going to deck him. If Christine had been art work, Allura was the Mona Lisa. She was not someone whose hair you casually played with. He pulled himself back and folded his hands together under the suit jacket so he would remember not to reach out again.

“What did you say to the pirate with the wandering hands?” she asked.

“Um,” Shiro glanced away from her and then back. She looked curious and a little bit amused. He shrugged.

“I am very curious now. I was a little bit curious but now I’m very interested.”

“I asked him if his translators were still working,” Shiro said.

“And then?”

“When they were doing ID scans, I think my Galra prison record came up. I just suggested that there was a reason I had survived the arenas and he didn’t want to find out what it was.”

Allura laughed and said, “Probably for the best.”

“What’s that?”

“That you threatened him before I could break his fingers.”

“You were busy being all scared and doe-eyed. I thought I was supposed to be the scary one. We really need to plan this stuff out if we’re going to stay in character,” Shiro said.

She laughed again.

“Next time, we can even have fake names,” she said.

She lingered a moment longer then said, “You were tired. You should rest.”

“You too, Princess.”

“Good night, Shiro,” she said. Before she walked away, she reached out and pressed her hand to his cheek. It took him by surprise. Her hand was soft and cool and gentle. He stared at her and for a long second, they stayed trapped together. Then Allura dropped her hand and she was gone, walking away leaving him to stare after her.

 

### Questions

Over the next few weeks, she tested and prodded, researched and hoped for some kind of explanation. There hadn't been a head wound to explain it away as a figment of her imagination. Her body was in perfect working order with the except of the magic that stood between her and her sense of touch.

She did not ask Coran. Coran had a diplomat’s skill at asking the right questions and if she started asking him questions, he would turn them around on her. It was wrong to keep the secret from Coran. She had lost a sense. It was an expected result of all the magic she used. It wouldn’t come as a surprise to him. She just didn’t want to have to explain it again. Explaining it to Shiro had been hard enough.

So she did her research on her own.

Her first theory was that it was just humans. Something about their biology deflected her quintessence and temporarily bypassed the magic. That was easy to disprove. She was able to accidentally bump into Hunk in the hallway and then later she tapped Lance on the forehead as part of some joke about whether or not he had lost his mind. Neither of those touches produced any reaction. She couldn't feel all of them.

She tested the place that Shiro had touched but there was nothing different about her face or her hair. There was nothing wrong with her. There didn’t seem to be anyway to trigger it herself and no record of Sacred Alteans who could use the magic on themselves to override the tithe.

It wasn’t the place. It wasn’t the species. It wasn’t in her control. It had to be something about him. She wasn’t sure how to explain it and she was finding it very difficult to test it.

She never touched Shiro.

It was a strange realization to make. She spent more time with him than she did with any of the other Paladins but orchestrating an accidental touch was hard. He was never within reach. He kept his hands carefully to himself. He was even difficult to accidentally bump into. He would turn around before she got close enough and smile at her. Polite and frustratingly distant.

She finally had to reach out and just grab his hand in order to force the contact. He wrapped his fingers around hers, warm and calloused and gentle and he leaned in a little bit to say something reassuring. She had been babbling about worries to give herself an excuse and once he was holding onto her, she couldn't remember what she had just said to him.

"Don't worry about this one, they'll be fine and if they aren't, we'll go get them," he said.

He squeezed her hand and she couldn't think of anything but his skin and the moment when she might have explained it was gone again. He let her go and turned back to the plans. She flexed her fingers then turned her thoughts back to the mission at hand. There was a war to win.

 

### Fine

Usually he worried about whether or not he was using a reasonable pretext. This time he just announced that he needed to talk to her before he pulled her out of the hangar. In a quiet hallway, he turned her face to the side. He was gentle but she gasped and tensed at the touch.

"I'm just checking for bleeding, your helmet has a crack," he snapped at her. His voice was harsh and he was breathing hard.

It wasn’t the surprise of being grabbed or the anger in his tone wasn't what had made her freeze up. His hand slid up into her hair and along her skull and she was aware of it. She could feel it when he pulled her hair out of the pins that held it out of her face. She stayed frozen. Her thoughts ran a mile a minute as he finished making sure that her skull was in one piece. His hand bumped her ear and then cupped her chin for just a moment before it fell away and her body went back to the way that it always was.

It was there and then it was gone.

"It was a glancing hit," she told him. She was talking before she had decided what to say. "It was nothing."

"Good," Shiro said.

The anger was still there in his voice and she reached out to grab his hand before he could stomp away. The skin was warm and just the littlest bit damp from being in gloves during the mission. She almost forgot what she wanted to say. She should have told him then but she couldn't find the words to say it so something came falling out about being grateful for his concern but how it was unnecessary.

He softened and shook his head as she spoke. He wasn’t angry at her. She knew that but it was still reassuring to see the anger fade from his expression. She held onto his hand and the little tether of sensation. He squeezed her fingers as she finished talking.

“Thank you. I am fine. I am uninjured. Everything is fine. Thank you for being concerned but it is unnecessary,” she told him.

"I-" he started and then just shrugged and disentangled his fingers from hers before saying, "Alright," like those syllables meant anything at all then he disappeared off down the hall.

Allura watched him go and then sank to the floor to flex her fingers and poke at her own head as though it would be able to bring back the sensation. There was nothing. The flash of feeling was gone again. Her body was a distant thing again.

 

### Ritual

Another planet, another set of customs and rituals and expectations that Shiro couldn’t begin to understand. Everyone here was mint green and unbearably polite. He felt like he was going to do something rude just by breathing wrong. Allura had handled the negotiations and she seemed perfectly at ease with it all. She had even agreed to do some ritual thing in the temple.

"I am not comfortable with the idea of you going in there on your own," Shiro said after pulling her away to talk to in a quiet corner. 

"So come with me."

He turned and looked at her. She looked back with one of those even expressions that he had started thinking of as her diplomat face. She sat down in a chair and looked out at the event and the swirling dancers. Shiro did not want to dance. He did not want to be there. He did not like the way the conversation had made it sound like Allura was some sort of walking battery.

"Is this dangerous?" he asked.

"No. It's a dawn blessing with different dressings. It is about as dangerous as donating blood to the sick."

"Your planet has healing pods and you still need blood donors?"

"Healing pods are expensive and rare. We have ten because this is a royal palace built for war. Altea still has doctors. Had. We had doctors and surgeries and blood transfusions and all manner of things," she said.

Shiro glanced away from her and then back again.

"It is the equivalent of a blood donation. It is just that dangerous. I'll need to sleep for a little while afterward. Healing the Balmora is a hundred times more dangerous than this. If you think I need someone to keep an eye on me, I am happy to have you there but it's unnecessary. You'll just be watching me sleep." 

"I'll do that."

She gave him that diplomat's face again but he could see a hint of surprise in her expression. Or maybe he imagined that. He was getting very good at imagining things in Allura's expression.

She brought him along with her when the party moved away from the banquet hall and into a huge temple. A wide open room that rose to a high peaked roof that was lit with low lights that might have been candles or might have been programmed to flicker like candle flames. The Pillan were technologically advanced but dressed everything up in wood and stone as though it had been built hundreds of years ago.

There were other people there to pray and offer up quintessence to the spirit of the planet or whatever. He had lost the plot when they had started talking about Allura giving up her life force to the whole thing. Allura was given a small room off of the main hall and Shiro lingered in the doorway, watching other people disappear into their own little rooms.

Allura wore a soft dress and sat in the middle of the room with her feet crossed like a kid at kindergarten. Shiro stood by the door with his arms crossed and tried not to watch her. Her eyes were closed, her hair was down, she was comfortable and calm and he found himself jealous. He could keep his thoughts even if he worked at it but he wasn't sure he had ever been as calm as she was at that moment.

She breathed in and then started to glow.

Glow.

Shiro inhaled slowly and did not swear. They were in the alien equivalent of a church. It would have been inappropriate to swear and he didn't think Allura would appreciate it.

The pink marks on her cheeks started to glow first. He couldn't stop himself from staring now and didn't try. The pink glow shone through her sleeves. He hadn't known that she had marks running up and down the rest of her body but they glowed brightly enough to shine through the dress she was wearing. Long narrow lines swirling down her arms and across her collar bone. The dress made it hard to pick out the exact paths. The lines dipped down to where the dress gathered in thicker layers at her waist. he could pick out details again along her thighs and down to her ankles.

The glow gathered around her like a swirl of fireflies. As it lifted off her skin, it was no longer the same pink of her marks but a blue white. Her marks still glowed but the the power gathered around her and made the hair at the back of Shiro's neck prickle. He could feel the energy in his own body.

When he turned the arm on, it was a harsh purple light rather than this pure snowy glow. It wasn't the same but his body wanted to answer this somehow. Something inside him wanted to pretend it could be a part of this too. He crossed his arms a little tighter and pushed that urge down.

The swirl of light around the Princess started to churn. A storm of lightning and crystal. Blue and white and cotton candy pink where it rose from her skin. He bit his lip. He wanted to throw himself into it and didn't know why. She could do this. She didn't need him to protect her. He didn't know what would happen if he let the magic crawling up out of his metal arm and into the rest of his body out into the world.

The light spiraled and rose towards the ceiling. Shiro watched as it fell like rain going the wrong way up to a crystal that hung over Allura's head. The magic beaded like water on the wood before running into the crystal like droplets rolling down hill. Lightning, rain, fireflies, droplets, cotton candy, wind, all of that and nothing like any of that.

Then it was over.

Shiro was still staring at her when she shook out her hair and rolled her shoulders. She hadn't moved during the entire ritual but now she bounced to her feet and tilted her head back to look at the crystal. There was no evidence of what had just happened but she smiled as though she could see the evidence of her hard work.

"That was incredible," Shiro said.

"It's not, not really. I'm sure humans do things that seem impressive to other people," she told  him.

"We don't do anything that approaches that," Shiro said.

"Don't stand in the door, you're going to make other people nervous," she said.

She grabbed his wrist and tugged him a few steps into the room. The magic still clung to her skin or to the air in the room. He could feel the power running up and down his body as she touched his skin. He let her draw him along with her. There was a pile of pillows in a little sitting area on the opposite side of the room and she pulled him down with her into the heap. She hadn't let go of his hand and he was painfully aware of her hands on his. Had she forgotten that she was holding onto him?

She laced her fingers with his and leaned her shoulder against his. He glanced down at her fingers curled around his hand and then up at the room. It was not an accident but he didn't know how to make sense of it. he never knew how to make sense of Allura.

"You could have done the ritual too," she told him.

"No, I couldn't do that."

"I could feel the power in you calling out," she said.

He had felt that too but it wasn't something he knew how to admit.

"Maybe but whatever the Galra did to my arm is not the same as what you did. I can chop up bad guys, that's not the same thing as powering planets. Destruction and healing aren't the same thing."

"Two sides of the same power. If you can learn to destroy then you can learn to heal," she said.

He didn't answer that. There wasn't much left in him that felt capable of healing. To channel all that destruction into something worthwhile, to kill in defense of the universe, was the best he could hope for. To fight for something worthwhile better than to kill just to survive but he had been a weapon for too long to become something else now.

Allura was still leaning against his side. She had said that she would be tired but it still made him feel unmoored from reality to have her pressed into his side like this. Her hands were soft and cool. She had laced her fingers with his and was holding onto the knot of their hands with her other hand. If this was what losing touch with reality felt like, then maybe he wanted to lose touch. He slid down a little farther into the pillows and rested his cheek against her hair. She shifted and turned into him until her face was buried in his neck.

"Princess?" he asked.

She muttered something that might have been words but he couldn't pick them out. He looked around the room again, searching for something. A way to bring things back to normal? An explanation? Someone to give him permission to enjoy this as much as he wanted to? He glanced down at her and she held his hand a little tighter as she nuzzled in a little closer. That was enough. If she wanted to be there, who was he to tell her no? He pulled her back with him and they silently rearranged themselves until she was draped across his chest and their hands were still twisted together. He found a blanket in the nest of pillows and tucked it in around them one handed.

He lay awake for a long time after her breathing had evened out and gone slow and deep. The crush - up to this point - had been easy to ignore. It was wrapped up in perfectly rational thoughts. He needed to keep her safe to keep the team safe. This was not about protecting a teammate. No, it still was. It was just also about curling himself around her and memorizing the smell of her hair and the sound of her heart beat. He didn't just want her to be safe. He wanted her to be right there, with him. She murmured in her sleep and he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy having her close even if it was just for a night.

 

### Morning

Allura woke warm and heavy. She was still tired but she blinked herself back to the world slowly. One of her feet stuck out from the blanket and she tucked it back into the nest of pillows before realizing why that was so unusual. She had felt it. Her foot had felt cold. She flexed her ankle and her bare toes brushed the soft fabric of the blanket. Her other foot was under Shiro's leg.

Shiro.

Oh.

Her fingers were still knotted together with his and she carefully untangled them so that she could pull herself up high enough to look down at him. He was sleeping. His mouth a little open, hair starting to grow in along his jaw line, his face turned towards her. He looked so peaceful. Peaceful wasn't a word she had ever thought to apply to Shiro. It had never fit before.

She ran a finger along his jaw. He hadn't shaved and the hair had grown in short and rough. She grinned at the sensation. He turned into the touch so she did it again before tracing the strange stunted shape of his ear and then running her fingers through his hair. It was soft and messy from sleep and she smoothed it back away from his face. She could feel the texture of his hair, the way the strands parted around her fingers the warmth of his skin under it. He was warm. She remembered vaguely learning that humans had higher body temperatures than Alteans did. It was a little like sleeping with a space heater.

"Hi," he said.

She looked back down to find him watching her with a half smile and dark eyes.

"Good morning," she said.

She didn't pull back. She should have. She was over the line. She was being inappropriate and far too familiar. She needed to give him space and remember how to behave. Before she could, he reached up and pushed his fingers into her hair, tracing the same line from her temple to back of her neck that she had just been following on him. She went still. Her chest locked up, her thoughts scattered. She could feel it. His hand settled at the back of her neck for a moment before he untangled his fingers and then ran them through her hair again.

"We should go back," she whispered.

"We should," he said.

He was still watching her as he played with her hair, he wrapped a curl around one of his fingers and smiled at it before tucking it back behind her ear. Breathing was very hard. His eyes were a dark brown, almost black but the irises were a few shades lighter. He was beautiful when he was smiling and the softness in his expression made her head spin.

She did not want to go anywhere.

Getting up would mean giving up all this sensation and she would lose her sense of touch in a rush all over again. It would fall back behind the wave of her own magic. Worse, she knew that he would lose this softness as soon as they stepped back into the real world. He would go back to being the Paladin. A few more minutes with his smile and his eyes and his warmth wasn't too much to ask.

"Soon," she said.

"Ok," he said.

He was still playing with her hair and she dropped her head back down to rest on his chest as he did. She could hear his heartbeat beneath her ear. She closed her eyes and traced patterns on his shirt with her finger tips. The warmth of his body through the cotton. The texture of the fabric against her finger tips. The smell of him. The little vibration through his chest when he chuckled at something she did.

She had never appreciated her sense of touch before. She had missed it when it had faded but even then, she hadn't truly appreciated how vivid the world was when it was written in sensation across every inch of skin. Losing it hadn't been enough. Getting it back was what brought it into vivid focus.

And it was him.

He was the warm, soft, laughing source of all that sensation. It left her head spinning and her heart pounding. She did not want to get up and go back to real world. She did not want to go back to deadened limbs and responsibilities and Shiro looking at her with serious concern instead of this soft humour.

She lay with her head on his chest, her eyes closed, and soaked up as much of the moment as she could.

 

### Burden

Allura tucked her feet up under her on the seat and looked over at Coran. He was tapping away at something on his screen. Intent and focused and the only person she had left from home.

“Coran?” she asked.

“Yes, Princess?” he didn’t look up.

“The tithe came,” she said.

He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. She shrugged and fiddled with her sleeve. She had wanted to avoid this conversation but Coran was the only one who might have the answers she needed to explain what was going on with Shiro. She needed to tell him. If anything went wrong, he would need to know. He wasn’t a Sacred Altean but he was older than her, maybe he knew more than she did.

“What is it taking?”

“It’s been finished for months,” she said and then realized that wasn’t an answer and added, “Touch.”

“That’s unusual.”

“Is it?”

She kept her tone flat. She didn’t even know that. There was so much she didn’t know. It was her body. Her power. Her history. She knew so little about it all. All the people that were supposed to teach her were gone. She couldn’t ask the Priests because they were all gone. She couldn’t ask her parents. She couldn’t go look it up at the library because even those were gone. Allura gathered up her thoughts and said a silent prayer of thanks for Coran. At least, she still had him.

“Everything?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“I supposed that given your abilities, that shouldn’t be surprising. Usually the tithe takes a portion of a sense. The magic causes a blockage in the body. A disruption of normal function. A little like too much power overloading an electrical switching. It is rare for someone to lose their sense in its entirety but you’re more powerful than the average Sacred Altean,” he said.

“Lucky me,” she said but that was the melancholy seeping back in. She pushed it away again. “I am grateful it isn’t my sight. It would be hard to fly if I couldn’t see.”

“You don’t need to be grateful,” Coran said.

Allura looked at him and sighed. “It is better to be grateful than to let my thoughts get caught in despondency. Is there ever any way to disrupt it again? You can repair a faulty circuit in your electricity analogy. Even if it were just temporary.”

She didn’t tell him that she had found a temporary fix.

“Do you know why the Sacred Alteans live in the Cloisters?” Coran asked.

“So they could all feel special and superior together?”

“Well, yes, that. Particularly the Cloister in the capital with it’s entrance tests and fancy uniforms,” Coran said and Allura laughed. The Sacred Alteans she remembered from her childhood were all painfully stuffy. Walking around in tight little knots in their black and green robes and muttering together. It was nice that Coran remembered them as obnoxious too. He laughed with her.

“Is there another reason?” she asked.

“If you put enough different kinds of power together, you can overcome the tithe. It isn’t so much a question of repairing the circuit as it is overloading it again. They lived together and traveled together because they could help one another navigate their losses. It is harder to be a Sacred Altean alone than it is to live and work with others who could share the burden.”

She nodded and let the conversation wind on to other things. To memories of the capital and Allura’s childhood, to where they were going next. Coran left her guide the conversation away but the idea of shared burden kept turning in her thoughts.  

 


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we enter the fluff portion of this fic.

### Sparring

 Allura had pulled her hair back from her face in a pony tail that was starting to turn from curls into frizz except where it was sticking to the back of her neck and her cheeks. She was sweating just enough to make her skin damp and her hair was clinging to it until she pushed it away. Rather than the usual white flight suit, she was wearing a pair of track pants and a tank top that was also clinging to her skin. It was the most human he had ever seen her look. She could have passed for a human except for the marks and her ears.

She had pink lines tracing up and down her arms. Swirling patterns drawn in long strokes. They were beautiful but they were not at all human. When she did something with the magic, they glowed faintly. It wasn't as bright as it had been during the ritual when she had fallen asleep in his arms but it was the same power. He could see the magic trace out from her chest and down her arms to her hands. It came from somewhere inside her and then she could control what it did.

His power didn't seem to come from anything but the arm itself and his control over it was questionable.

"You're forcing it," she said.

"I don't know how else to do it. It only ever happens when I'm about to die," Shiro told her.

She wanted him to practice using the arm. He trained. He had gotten used to relying on his ability to fight to keep him alive and going even a few days without time in the gym left him feeling anxious. That was training for his body. He had never tried to force the arm to light up when he wanted it to. It was pretty reliable when he was in a fight but he didn't really like playing with it. It felt too much like playing with a loaded gun. It felt too much like admitting that there was something wrong with him.

Allura disagreed. She thought he needed to take a more active role in learning to use it. Her logic was sound. It was a weapon. He spent enough time bullying Hunk and Pidge into weapons training to sound like anything but a hypocrite for trying to argue that it wasn't necessary. It being a necessary and logical thing to do did not stop him from feeling uncomfortable about this.

That Allura was grinning and bouncing and dressed like a human was not helping him find focus. They were using hand to hand drills to break up his irritating failure to make the arm power up without an enemy present. Hand to hand was fine. She was letting him win some which bothered his pride a little but she also kept laughing like it was a great game each time he managed to land a hit or flip her down to the mat. Watching her laugh and hold out a hand to be helped up was enough to make up for knowing he was being allowed to knock her down at all.

"Quintessence is a conversation. You can’t force your conversation partner to answer, you have to ask better questions," she told him.

"That is a complicated metaphor. I don't think this is quintessence, I think this is probably just Galra tech."

"It is not solely that."

"It isn't like yours," he said. He waved the arm at her. "There's no blue shiny magic light. If what you do is quintessence then what I do is not. There's no healing super powers in this thing. There's purple death glow. It isn't the same."

"Purple death glow," she repeated, cocking her head to the side and pursing her lips at him.

"I told you once that I'm not poetic. It glows purple and is very good at killing things. That's about all it's good for," he said.

He did not say that that was all he was good for but some voice in his head whispered it. He pushed it away. Maybe if he could push it away often enough, it would stop whispering to him at all. He would keep doing things other than killing, keep living until the arenas were so far behind him that he barely remembered what it had been like to be nothing but a killer.

"If you can channel energy into destruction then you can channel it into other things but first you have to believe in your ability to open yourself to the power," she said.

He made a face at her and she shrugged in response. She was very good at being poetic. She could spin words together to say exactly what she meant. She pushed the stray bits of hair out of her face and came at him faster than he expected her to. She grabbed the metal arm that he was still holding up as a prop in the conversation and used it to get some leverage to spin him and nearly knock him to the ground. He caught himself before he hit and came up in a crouch.

The only advantage he had over Allura was size and a better eye for when to fight dirty. He might have been able to win if he'd been fighting for his life. He had learned how to land two or three good hits against a stronger, faster opponent and come out victorious but sparring was a fair fight and he didn't want to hurt her. In a fair fight, she could effortlessly hand him his ass over and over again.

He bounced backwards, getting space before he came at her direct and didn't feint like she expected him to. He caught her around the waist and threw himself at the ground, taking her down with him. The momentum was enough to carry them and he flipped her onto her back. She hadn’t let him win that one and she gapsed, startled that he had managed it at all.

Now he had her flat on her back, his arms still tangled around her as she breathed hard. Bad idea. That was a very bad idea. Her mouth was a little bit open, one of her hands was up against his chest. Her eyes were shut and she muttered a swearword through a gasp of air. 

"You're ok. Sorry. I must have knocked the breath out of you. That's got to be extra weird when you can't feel the impact. Here, sit up," he said pulling her back up and untangling himself so they could sit on the floor together while she pulled in a deeper breath of air.

"I felt it," she said. 

 

### Explanation

 Shiro frowned at her. Everything he owned was black. The shirt and pants he was wearing. It was a weird detail to focus on but breathing was still hard and she needed something else to think about until she could get it back under control. They’d landed hard and his arm had been around her back when they’d come down and now her lungs were fighting her for every breath of air.

She tried to ignore it and let her body remember how to breathe on its own. Shiro was sitting very close to her and he was a very good distraction. His black shirt was damp around his collar. He kept pushing his hair back away from his face. Black and white. Always black and white.

"I can feel you," she said again.

"What?"

"When you touch me, I can feel it."

A long stretched silence. "How long has that been going on?"

"I think it has always been true. We don't touch often enough for me to really say for sure."

He was still frowning at her. She reached out and took his hand and he let her hold it in both of hers. Now that it was on the table it felt unnecessary to go on pretending that she wasn’t constantly thinking about doing this.

"Just me?"

"A sacred Altean has more power than they need. When we lose a sense, it's because the magic has caused an obstruction. More power can overwhelm it, like a storm causing a dam to flood. It's temporary but predictable. You aren't Altean, I know that, but your arm has power or you do and I know you don't like talking about that but the truth remains that there is something about you that is powerful enough to override my senses. It is quintessence. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to feel you like this. You’ve got enough magic in you to give me my sensation back when we’re this close."

She was rambling. She knew that but he kept watching her and she didn’t know what else to do. She snapped her mouth shut. Talking too much wasn’t going to make it better.

His hand was rough and calloused but just as warm as she remembered it. His fingers flexed around hers so he was holding her as tightly as she was holding him. The rest of him was still and frozen. He was calm and serious and it felt like years had passed since she had woken up in arms and he had laughed at her while she cuddled into his chest. Maybe that entire morning had been a dream.

"That explains the night at the temple," he said.

Not a dream.

"That was wonderful," she said.

He gave her a little smile and watched her hands on his. There was a frown line between his eyes and she just kept staring at it.

"What's that expression for?" she asked.

"What expression?"

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

"You're looking at me like you want me to stop."

"I don't," he said.

He wrapped both his hands around hers. She hadn't been close to him for long enough to be able to feel the metal hand but she could feel his skin. Still a little frown line and he was still sitting motionless as he considered her.

"Shiro. You don't owe me anything."

"What?" he said.

This whole training fiasco. Why had she admitted it now? He was probably watching her like that because he’d realized that she orchestrated it like this. Hand to hand combat and these borrowed clothes. She had felt uncomfortably naked in them and it had taken a long time to be able to relax into being dressed like this. The marks on her skin were not supposed to be visible to strangers. It was as unthinkable as going around without pants on but it was far easier to accidentally touch someone when you had more skin to work with. Humans had different social mores. The others trained in equally revealing outfits without considering it worth mentioning. Now that she could see him putting those pieces together, she felt silly and stupid.

"You can ask me to stop. I've been trailing you around for weeks, looking for excuses to touch you. I should just step away, give you some space and some-"

"I don't need space. Not from you."

She stopped and looked up at him. She was still holding onto his hand. Clinging onto his hand. She meant it. Leaving him alone meant leaving behind any chance of feeling anything again but she would do it rather than make him uncomfortable. She loosened her fingers and started to pull them back to her lap.

"Allura."

He grabbed hold of her before she could get too far away. He pulled her in a little closer.

"I'm yours. You can have me. However you need. Whatever you need. Always."

"Shiro."

"Always. Anything."

"That's an unreasonable promise."

He laughed and leaned in so that his forehead rested against hers. She froze at the unexpected contact and the little rush of sensation. They were sitting in the middle of the training room floor but it felt like a private little universe. The only place that mattered.

"It isn't. I mean it," Shiro told her. "What do you need?"

"I don't know."

"Sit with me," he said.

He pulled her in close to his side, wrapping one arm around her shoulder and sliding his hand down her arm. She sighed and collapsed into the touch. Later she could think about it. Later she would question whether this was right or fair or proper. Later she could wonder if he was just being nice and whether or not she wanted him to be anything else.

There would be time for all that later.

Now, he was letting her rest her forehead against his neck as he ran his hand up and down her arm and held her close to his warmth.

Now, that was all she wanted.

 

### Ticklish

Shiro came up beside her and took her hand. She jumped a little and spun on him. She knew who it was immediately and her fingers were already folded around his before her thoughts had caught up. He smiled.

"You should warn people before you do something like that," she said.

"You told me yesterday that you had been trying to come up with pretenses to touch me. I'm trying to make it easy," he said.

He turned to look away from her before he finished the comment and she couldn't see his expression clearly as he glanced off at the display screens.

"Thank you," she said.

He stood with her on the quiet bridge as she read through the screens. News feeds from multiple planets streamed across her console and Shiro sat there as she scanned them without a word of complaint. She absently traced his fingers as she flicked through news. She wanted to know what was going on out there. She wanted to be able to trace out new paths and pick out potential allies before they were in a time of crisis. Her father had always done this and she kept hoping it would help. So far, it was just another chore to add to her day and keep her busy.

He turned her hand over and ran his fingers along her palm. His fingers were light and when they moved up to her wrist, it made her shiver.

"You're ticklish aren't you?" he said.

"What?"

"That's at least the third time you've gotten twitchy when I touched you. You're ticklish."

"You surprise me. I'm not used to being able to feel anything. You should count yourself lucky that I don't punch people in surprise."

"Ah, so you're very ticklish," he said.

She frowned at him.

He was grinning at her. Grinning. Not a tilted smile or one of those kind smiles he had that were just to make someone else feel better. A wide grin like he was delighted by this news. She had never seen him look so goofy.

"Oh. No. Don't tickle me," she said.

"It doesn't work through clothes, right?"

"Shiro."

"Yes?"

"Are you ticklish?"

"Maybe."

"Really?" she asked. It didn't seem right. Tickling was not something that adults did to begin with and him bringing it up at all was ridiculous. He couldn't be ticklish. And yet, he looked so amused by it all. Maybe he was. She couldn't picture it. Children tickled each other and rolled around giggling when they did it. She asked, "Do you giggle?"

"Do you?"

"More shrieking and kicking than giggling. I broke my cousin's nose once when we were young."

He was a little closer now. He was in her personal space. She was aware of  him and the screens scrolled on without her noticing what any of them said. The blue glow flickered on his features as he smiled at her. He was really very tall.

On anyone else this would be flirting. His gaze slid down and then back up as though he was considering where she might be ticklish enough to shriek and try and kick him. This was flirting. This was what Shiro looked like when he was flirting. Smiles and unwavering eye contact and near enough that when she turned to face him her shoulder brushed his chest.

She was too nervous to return it for a fraction of a moment too long and he started to pull back. She hadn't meant to tell him no. She didn't know how to speak this language well enough to know how to say yes. She had spent her adolescence busy with politics and war and not flirting. The closest she had ever gotten to this had been friends with benefits when they were both distracted by the possibility of an attack. Sex was easier than flirting. What the hell was she supposed to say to him when he was like this?

His eye contact broke and his attention jumped to the screens and then further away.

"Some other time maybe," he said.

No. She stepped into the space he was leaving between them.

"You give up fast," she said.

"Do I?" he said.

His hands came up and caught her around the waist. He had been close enough for long enough that she knew he was doing it but not so long that she could really feel his hands. She let him pull her in and tickled his ribs when she was close enough that it would be hard for him to back away. He let out a loud bark of laughter and twisted away from her.

"It is not fair that you can't feel it," he said.

"You started this. You shouldn't start things that you aren't prepared to finish," she said.

She was close to him and he wasn't really trying to get away. He twisted away when her hands found someplace that he was ticklish, right at the bottom of his ribs seemed to get the strongest reaction. It wasn't giggling but the laughter wasn't anything she had heard from him before. That grin kept surfacing on his face. Playful and broad and unapologetic.

He finally got his hand up behind her ears to tickle along her neck and she yelped and started to backpedal. She had gotten used to winning but he had wrapped the metal arm around her waist and backed her up against the console while she had been distracted by his laughter. She was trapped there. Laughing and swearing at him as she failed to push him away. He kept laughing at her.

"Do I want to know?" a voice asked.

Shiro stopped and his face turned pink across his cheekbones before he straightened up and pulled himself together again. He turned around to look at Keith who was watching them from the doorway with an expression that was half annoyance and half mocking amusement. Allura wasn't sure what Keith was going to say later but Shiro was probably going to catch some kind of teasing for it.

"Whether you want to know or not, I don't intend to explain it to you," Allura said.

Shiro laughed again. She turned to leave. She could keep her tone even but her heartbeat was too fast and she was too overwhelmed to actually have a conversation with Keith there. He didn't say anything and she didn't glance back to see what sort of look he was giving Shiro.

Shiro leaned into her before she got out of range and ran his finger along the shell of her ear. She shivered and spun on him. He was still grinning. A little embarrassed but not enough to make him stop. She called him a rude name and flipping him an equally rude gesture and she heard him laughing again as the door slid shut. She stood in the hallway for a moment until she could stop smiling before she went to finish reading the news in her room.

 

### Indignity

"Are you offended?" he asked. He leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed and his head tilted as he considered her. Her stomach flipped and her heart stuttered a little just to see him there. Oh no. This morning, she had liked him. He was a good person. She liked that it was his skin that she could feel and not someone else's. She trusted him and knew he was someone she could rely on. She had liked him. Sometime when he'd been pressed up against her, laughing into her ear, that had shifted.

"I'm not offended. You're still an asshole," she said looking back down at her screen even though she didn't remember what she was reading.

"That's vulgar language for a princess to use," he said with that teasing grin back on his face. Her stomach did another flip. When he had pinned her in the training room and then treated her so gently after she'd been winded, she had felt a little of this but it had still been small enough to crush down and ignore. It was the laughter and knowing that he was interested too. He had started it. He had looked disappointed when she hadn't returned it right away. He had come to find her to make sure that she wasn't upset. His expression was soft even when he grinned at her.

"Come sit with me, no tickling," she said.

"I like watching you squirm, it's so undignified for a princess," he said.

"I like your laugh enough to tolerate the indignity but no tickling right now, just come sit with me," she said.

He sat down with her and she leaned her shoulder against his. For a moment, she thought he would start it again but his hand smoothed her hair back from her temple without pausing to tickle her behind the ear. She relaxed and closed her eyes. She tried to find the words to describe that feeling of her heart beat stuttering when he smiled at her but she couldn't put any words she knew into the right pattern.

He didn't fill the silence. He stroked her hair and they sat together until she dozed off against his shoulder.

 

### Tense

 

It had gone on too long and Shiro didn't know how to ask for anything more. And this was good. It was great. It was the anchor that he could hold on to when everything else skated too close to being out of control. Allura would lean into him and play with his hands while they talked or she would sit there and absently stroke his fingers while she read something on a tablet. The more often she did it, the faster it worked. He could see her shift and smile as her sense of touch came back by degrees.

She liked to stay there, close to him, for as long as she could manage. She dozed off sometimes with her head on his shoulder and her fingers laced with his. He had carried her to bed a few times and every time that he tucked her in, she would reach for him one more time. Sometimes he let her grab his hand again and would sit by her bed until he remembered how to think straight and then he'd escape to his own room to try and force his thoughts back into order.

She was easy going about it.

"Are you aware of how tense you get?" Shiro asked her.

There was a line and he was about to cross it.

"Do I?" she asked.

"You hold all your tension in your back and shoulders," he told her.

She did. He was plunging over the line but it wasn't a lie. He ran his hand up her spine and muscles were coiled tight. She didn't relax. She could have fun and leave her worries behind for a little while but she carried too much in that muscle tension. She worried too much about everyone else, all the time.

"I guess I do, I can only feel it like this so it doesn't bother me much," she said.

"You'd feel better if you relaxed," he said.

"Are you offering to help ease the tension?"

She turned and looked over her shoulder. Shiro stared back at her. Was she flirting? Was it a completely innocent question? Was she trying to shame him into dropping the entire concept? She was hard to read sometimes. Sometimes he thought he understood her completely but then there would be moments like this where he had no idea.

"If you want me to," he said.

"If I asked you to touch me, would that make you uncomfortable?" she asked.

"How else would I do it?"

"I mean, my skin," she said.

"Oh."

Oh.

Oh, he hadn't been expecting that. Which was ridiculous. It was exactly what he had just offered her. He had been too busy bracing himself to not be disappointed when she said no that he hadn't put much thought into what would happen if she said yes.

"It's just that the sensation is stronger if it's skin to skin," she said. "I'd rather have you touching me."

Shiro hadn't been ready for that but he was not going to refuse it. He’d been expecting her to remind him that there was a line and that just because she flirted, didn’t mean she was offering him anything else. Allura sat up and turned around. It took a few moments of shifting before she sat in front of him with her shirt gone and her hair pushed over her shoulder. Her skin was always cool to the touch. Her body temperature was a lot lower than a human's. Her skin was soft and smooth and marked by long trailing spirals of pink.  The marks on her cheeks were writ large on the rest of her body.

She was not wearing a shirt. He decided to ignore that. He was going to embarrass himself anyways but obviously her sense of propriety was a little different than his and from this angle, he couldn’t see anything but her back.

Shiro was too surprised by it to do anything but stare in awe. Her skin was utterly inhuman. It was incredibly beautiful. They weren't tattoos. They were something he could feel, raised and shinier than her skin. Almost like scar tissue if scar tissue were flawless and elegant. He reached out to tentatively run a finger along one of the curls and she shivered.

"Sorry," he said.

"It was unexpected, not unpleasant. You can do it again," she said.

Maybe he was reading things into what she said. She had just said that he could do it again. He let himself imagine that she was asking him to do it again. He stroked the length of one of the marks with his thumb and she made a very soft sound. A sigh. A moan. No. No. His imagination was not going in that direction. A sigh. Soft and quiet and he chose another and followed it with his finger to see if she would make the sound again. She did and tilted her head to the side.

He had gone into this with promises of a back rub but hadn't worked up the courage to touch her bare skin with more than a finger tip. He forced himself to flatten his palm against her back. It took him a moment. Just five finger tips at first then he slowly forced himself to press his hand down so he was touching her with his entire hand. He knew that the metal hand didn't work the same way as skin did and for the first time in a long time, he felt the loss of that hand. He touched her with that hand too, even if he knew she wouldn't be able to feel it as strongly. She murmured and pressed back into the touch.

"This is ok?" he asked.

"Yes."

He smiled, a rush of irrational confidence ran through him.

"Are you sure, I'm not making you uncomfortable?"

"Keep doing what you were doing, Shiro," she said.

He couldn't keep back the little laugh as he got a little closer to her and started tracing a finger along the spirals. Barely a touch. He had the metal hand braced on her hip and he was able to use it to keep her from pressing back into him as he toyed with her. Each time he touched her harder, she made a little sound for him. She was going to kill him and he was going to die frustrated and happy.

By the time he started rubbing slow circles into her back, she had dropped her head to the side and left her neck exposed. He leaned in but stopped himself before the urge to kiss a line down her throat could take complete control of him. She tensed and he drew back. He had been breathing on her neck. He was edging over one line but that didn't mean he was ready to steamroller across all of them. There was a line somewhere near this one where he would forget to stop and question it. He wasn't sure enough of his self control to flirt with that line. Allura was soft and willing but she was chasing sensation, not sex. He was afraid of pushing her too close to an edge that she wasn't paying attention to.

She leaned back, following him as he retreated and he let his more impulsive side win for just a moment, just long enough to press a kiss to the back of her neck before he retreated to rubbing her back. He rubbed his palm against her shoulder in slow circles. Shoulder blade to neck and then back down. She was still and relaxed under his hands and he rubbed slow circles down her spine and then back up.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"Don't stop, do that again," she said.

He let himself slip back over the line. He nuzzled into her neck as he rubbed the line up and down her back. She dropped her head back for him and murmured something incoherent and happy as he pressed his face into her skin.

Her comms panel beeped and Shiro stopped to glance at it.

“No,” she said.

“Princess?” the panel said in Coran’s voice.

“I hate him.”

“You don’t hate him, go answer the phone,” he said. He kissed the side of her neck again. “We can do this again later.”

“I want to do it now.”

Shiro burst out into laughter. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against his chest. She huffed in annoyance as he laughed into her hair. It was hilarious. That being interrupted left her so annoyed made him happy. That she wanted to be there, curled up with him, more than she wanted to be anywhere else was enough to make him happy.

“Princess, are you there? Is everything alright?” Coran asked.

“If he comes into this room, worried about you,” Shiro trailed off, “That’s not a conversation I want to have.”

“Fine.”

“Later. I promise you, later,” he said.

She grabbed her shirt and pulled it on and made a face at the panel as she said, “I’m here, Coran, what is it?”

 

### Kitchen

She heard him coming this time. She stood in the kitchen and stirred her food with a spoon and listened to him cross the room. Steady footfalls, he could probably be quiet if he didn't insist on wearing those boots. He paused behind her and she waited a moment before she turned around. He didn't wait for her. He ran a finger down her ear and she twitched away, spinning to glare at him. He was smiling at her again and the glare faded.

"Hungry?" she asked holding up the bowl.

"Not really," he said. "Is it later yet?"

"I'm hungry," she said.

She took a bite and he kept smiling at her. He had gone from uneasy flirting to utter confidence in the time it took to flip a switch. She wasn’t quite sure what had caused the shift, maybe the moment when he had pressed his face against her neck and wrapped his arms around her body.

"I like it when you wear human clothes," he said. "Who are you borrowing them from? Which one of the team is tall enough for you to borrow their clothes and own baby blue track pants? That's a stupid question, it's Lance isn't it?"

"I got the laundry system to print them out for me. I chose the color. The originals were a charcoal gray."

"The laundry system printed them out for you," he repeated slowly.

"Yes."

She ate another spoonful of food and watched him frown like she had said something absurd. Where else was she supposed to get new clothes in the depths of space? The track pants were tight around the ankle and the waist but hung loose everywhere else. The fabric was soft and stretchy and while she wouldn't wear something like this out into public, they were comfortable for running to the kitchen for a snack. The white shirt she wore was from the humans' collection too, thinner fabric than the pants but looser than she usually wore. It at least covered her everywhere that clothing was supposed to. It was not a beautiful outfit but she liked that it made Shiro smile.

"The laundry system doesn't just wash clothes. It can create new garments. You can even adjust the patterns and measurements but I don't think that would work as well on the scans of your clothes since it isn't programmed in with the full measurements so the scaling wouldn't work well for other sizes. Even imperfect, it's very convenient. When I told you that you could all use the castle's systems, I did mean all of them. You can use it to get clothes in colours other than black," she said.

She reached out took a pinch of his shirt between her fingers. He smiled at her again. "You'll have to show me how to do that some time. But I like black."

"I've noticed," she said.

She ate through their conversation. Shiro was on the edge of her personal space and he kept watching her with an even expression and a little smile. She kept eating in hopes that it would keep her stomach from actually dropping out of her body and through the floor.

"You would look good in colours," she told him. "You should try on some of the Altean clothes we must have in storage. Something in purple maybe."

"I don't think I'm a purple person."

"Try it for me?"

Shiro's face broke into a smile. He leaned in and caught her around the waist. She startled as he picked her up and sat her on the counter. Carefully, he took her empty bowl and spoon away and pushed it away. She watched him do it all and had to force her mouth shut. Her heart rate was wrong. Too fast. She was too startled to even reach out and touch him. He was so close and she still couldn't feel him. Her knees were spread to make room for his hips between them.

"For you, I will try anything at least once."

"Ok," she said.

That made him laugh. He touched her first. His hands slid up from her hips, under the hem of the shirt to the skin of her waist. Oh. Confident Shiro was a dangerous thing. He was going to make her lose her mind entirely. 

"You're going to have to talk to me more than this, Allura," he said.

She had let her eyes fall shut and she forced them open again, "What was that?"

"Is this really ok? Sometimes I think I've got you figured out and you're as interested as I am and then you go all still and startled and I can't tell if you want me to stop," he said.

"I don't want you to stop," she said.

"Good start," he said.

"I haven't had anyone try and," the words failed her. Seduce was too presumptuous. Everything else that came to mind sounded silly. Woo? That wasn’t the right word. She waved her hand at him and just said, "Do this. Ever. There were a few childhood friends I took to bed over the years but we never flirted like this first. It was a lot more direct."

"Do you want me to be direct?" he asked.

"I like everything that is happening right now. I don't want you to change it. It's just a language I don't speak yet but I'm a quick study, I'll pick it up as we go," she said.

She sat up a little straighter so that she could press her body into his hands as she ran her hands up into his hair. He leaned into her and she nuzzled his cheek. He had shaved and his skin was smooth as she rested her cheek against his. More laughter, near her ear. She had done something he found funny but she didn't want to pull back and ask him what it was. His hands were running up her back now and anything that might make him stop doing that could wait. It could wait a very long time. The marks were sensitive and he was tracing long lines down either side of her spine. Everything else could wait.

She opened her eyes and slid a little closer before she heard the door slide open. Pidge was standing in the doorway looking distinctly uncomfortable. Allura sighed and set her chin on Shiro's shoulder and did not glare. It wasn’t Pidge’s fault that they were cuddling in the kitchen. Pidge did not deserve a glare.

"You should come back later," Allura said.

"I - uh - it can't really wait?" Pidge made the statement sound like a question as she looked at her shoes.

Shiro swore very softly into Allura's neck and then pulled back and turned around. He said, "What's up?" in a disarmingly normal voice. Allura hopped down off the counter and straightened out her shirt. Pidge shot them both a look and then threw herself into the explanation of what had come up on the scanners as though talking fast enough could out pace any awkwardness.

 

### Together

She was sleeping. Shiro stood in the doorway for a moment and let himself stare. He did not usually allow himself to stare at her. He didn't want to get caught. He didn't want to have to explain his infatuation to her or anyone else. He didn't want to explain it to himself. He was more than infatuated. Maybe back at the start, that had been all it was but he was in far too deep now.

He had only let himself into her room because she had told him to come find her there once he got back. They had only sent two lions out to check in on the distress call. It had been an easy enough mission. No real danger for anyone involved. They’d towed the damaged ship back to the moon colony it had come from and gone on their way. He had showered and come looking for her.

Allura lay on her stomach, sprawled across the bed. She was usually careful and proper and ladylike and he liked seeing her with her arms thrown out and her hair in her face. She looked like a real person like this. Like a college student who had fallen asleep after spending all night studying. She was still wearing the cotton shirt and the blue track pants. She was just a girl. It was easy to forget that she was just a girl. In some other world, she would probably be studying political science at a prestigious university somewhere.

"Hey," he said shaking her shoulder.

Of course, she couldn't feel that.

He slid his hand along her lower back where the shirt she was wearing left just the hint of an opening. She shifted and he ran his hand up her spine. She made a soft sound, somewhere on the divide between asleep and awake. It was dangerously close to a moan. It was something his imagination could very easily turn into a moan.

"Do that again," she muttered.

"Good morning, Princess."

"Again," she said.

"Bossy," he said.

"Please do that again, if you would be so kind. A little lower and a little harder," she said.

"Polite bossy is still bossy," he said. She was fun to tease. Shiro liked having someone he could tease and joke with. She made faces at him when he annoyed her and every one of them was adorable.

She made one of those faces at him and started to sit up.

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I don’t mind if you boss me around," he said. He pushed her back down. She tensed and he let up the pressure immediately. Damn it. He didn't even know what line he had crossed to make her nervous like that. A second later she lay back and settled onto her stomach.

"It’s ok. You scared me a little until I remembered."

"I scared you?"

"I can't feel that hand. It took me a moment to remember that."

"I thought you could feel it when I touch you."

"I can feel your skin and once I'm a little more warmed up, I'll be able to feel everything but right now, just skin."

"Oh," he ran his other hand up her back to push her down against the mattress. "Better?"

"Ha ha," she said dryly. He laughed too. Less sarcastically. A moment later, he got a real laugh from her. She shook her head and folded her arms up under her head.

Shiro ran his hand back up her skin. She shifted her hips a little and sighed. He laughed and did it again. Up and down. He sat up on the bed with her and used both hands to push her shirt higher so he could touch her skin without it getting in the way. Her back was marked with swirls of rich pink against the dark brown. Her skin was soft and she was melting under the touch. He could feel her relaxing inch by inch. 

This was better the second time around than it had been the first. He knew her body a little bit better, not as well as he wanted to but better. He kept filing it away, each time he learned something new. She didn’t like fluttery touches, she liked it when he rubbed her back with enough strength behind it that he worried he was going to cross the line and hurt her. He hadn’t hurt her yet.

“I want to be direct,” she said.

“Direct?”

“As much as I enjoy the flirting, I think you should know that I want to lock the door, turn off the comms and take all your clothes off,” she said.

“Oh, that kind of direct,” he kept his tone conversational but only barely.

She rolled over and his hand was on her stomach now. Allura laid out on a bed and looking up at him was more than he could handle for a minute. He forgot how to talk or make his body move. He stared down at her. Her hair was loose in a cloud around her head. Her eyes were soft and careful as she looked up at him.

“Yeah, I wanna do that,” he managed to say and his voice was not nearly as calm or collected as he had wanted it to be. “But we probably shouldn’t turn comms off. ”

“I will accept emergency frequency calls only.”

“And I’m pretty sure that Pidge was embarrassed enough by last time to make sure that no one oversteps that,” Shiro said with a laugh. Pidge had been embarrassed, Keith hadn’t seemed to care much at all. Shiro wondered if the two of them had mentioned it to Lance or Hunk. What did this thing they had going on look like from the outside? What did other people think of it? He didn’t care. She stretched and he really, really didn’t care what anyone else had to say about this.

Allura slid away from him. He hadn’t had many chances to be in her room before and he took the moment of distraction while she fiddled with the settings on the system to look around. It was nicer than his room or any of the bunk rooms. That wasn’t surprising. Screens showed landscapes of what must have been Altea, draperies hung around the bed, her closet was open and spilling with dresses he had never seen her wear. She left her shoes in a heap by the door and her dressing table was a mess of things that were probably alien cosmetics and hair products that he couldn’t begin to identify.

He had expected neat. Her outward appearance was so neat and tidy and carefully put together. Her room was a mess. Soft fabrics, pale colours, a vase of flowers, all the perfect little touches that seemed so Allura. But it was a mess. A beautiful mess but a complete disaster area.

“If you are thinking of commenting on my housekeeping, remember that I am stronger than you and am very good at throwing punches,” she said.

“Wouldn’t dare,” he said.

“Good.”

She came around the bed rather than lying back down and he was disappointed right up to the moment when she sat down in his lap. He smiled and kissed her forehead. Her attention stayed on him. He held her gaze as he leaned in again. He closed his eyes before he kissed her cheek, high on her cheekbone where the little pink mark was. If the big ones were sensitive, maybe the smaller one was too. He had tried to kiss her a few times and she hadn’t stayed still long enough for it.

"If we’re being direct, can I do a very human thing?" he asked.

"What's that?"

"I want to kiss you."

"Humans are a kissing species?"

"You say that like it's a category like mammal or reptile."

"Alteans aren't a kissing species."

"No?"

"No, but it's nice to know that there is something between hand holding and blow jobs on the spectrum of human affection."

Shiro choked on his laugh.

He coughed and barked it out. His hands had been coming up to cup her face and pull her in for a kiss but instead he let them fall to her thighs as he laughed at her. She was sitting on his knees, her legs spread but her body still far enough away that he could breathe. If she got any closer, he was going to lose the ability to form coherent thoughts.

"I don't think I ever expected to hear you say blow job."

"Lance got mad one day and told Keith to blow him. I made Hunk explain what it meant. I thought it was an insult but apparently not."

"Did he die?"

"Who? Lance?"

"Hunk. Did he die of embarrassment trying to explain that?"

"Nearly."

Shiro let the laugh tumble out again. He leaned in so that he could rest his forehead against her shoulder while he laughed. She laughed too but not as hard. Her hands had come up to play with his hair as they talked and he was thinking about that touch far too hard.

"So Alteans aren't a blow job species either?" he asked through the laughter.

"We are, we just don't call it that."

"Is it rude to ask a princess what the euphemism for oral sex is on her planet?" Shiro was still grinning. Everything about this conversation was delightfully entertaining. Maybe he was just happy. He was just so damn happy that she would laugh and joke and tell him to turn off the comms so they wouldn’t be interrupted.

"Probably," she said in a very serious voice that just made him laugh harder.

"Tell me anyway?"

"Long drink."

"Huh."

"It is no less incomprehensible than blow job. Do you blow when you do it because I'm not sure how that would be enjoyable. And even if blow is somehow an apt description, is it employment?"

"Fine. It's a ridiculous euphemism. So is long drink."

"It takes a long time if you're doing it well and it makes you a little drunk. It's much more apt than yours."

"It makes you drunk?"

"Doesn't it?"

"Not in my experience."

"Really? Your species smells that strongly of sex and you don't?"

"Don't what? Are you implying that you get drunk off of - um,” he waved his hand around because he couldn’t choose a word that he was willing to say to her. She had cocked her head to the side and was studying him. “Um. Did you say that I smell strongly of sex?”

“You do.”

“Oh.”

Allura laughed and said, “In technical language, the hormone and pheromone content promote the release of endorphins and result in mild euphoria and relaxation. In practical terms: little bit drunk."

"You just said that you get high from giving head," Shiro coughed again and apologized, "Sorry, that might have been rude."

"You're not wrong."

The conversation lapsed into silence because Shiro had no idea what to say to that.

"This conversation is an invitation. If that wasn't clear, I'd like to make it clear," she said.

“Direct,” he said.

Shiro looked at her. She held his gaze. Her mouth was just a little bit open, like she was about to say something but she held her silence.

Shiro leaned in a little closer and she started to smile at him but held her expression on the edge of serious. Shiro slid in again until the were nose to nose. She was laughing now. Her entire face lit up when she was laughing and he would be able to tell that she was grinning from the look in her eyes alone.

"Back to the part of the conversation with the kissing," he said.

"Ah, that," she said.

He closed the last of the distance and kissed her very softly. Whatever she had been expecting, it was obviously not that. She went very still. Something was wrong. He started to pull back to ask what it was and she grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him back. That was enough reassurance. He leaned into the kiss and she opened her mouth in a gasp and he kissed her harder. Her fingers were still twisted in his shirt and he wrapped an arm around her waist as she pulled him down with her. They fumbled around, rearranging limbs and pushing her hair out of the way so that they could settle together.

She was flat on her back with her shirt hiked up past her ribs where he had been touching her. She was still smiling at him.

"Shirt off," she said.

"Bossy."

"I'm a princess, I am allowed to be bossy."

Shiro did as he was told. Her hands were immediately on his skin, tracing up over his body before he had even finished getting the shirt over his head. He settled back down against her, his stomach against hers made her arch up and press herself into him. He pressed her back down. She was stronger than he was but he didn't need to do more than suggest it before she was lying back and letting him stretch out over her. Her hands were roaming everywhere. They traced scar tissue and ran up into his hair. She ran her thumb along his jaw and her fingers down his throat. Flat palms up his back and then finger tips over his shoulder.

He buried his face in her neck, kissing a line from her ear to her collar bone while she explored his body with her hands.

"I like you," she said with a little laugh in his ear.

"You like that you can feel me," slipped out of his mouth before he'd decided to say it. He should not have said that. He didn’t look up. Oh no. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

"No," she said. "Yes. I do like that. But I like you."

He murmured against her neck. Not quite words. He didn't know what to say. He shouldn't have let himself say that at all.

"I like you,” she said a little stronger. “I like that I can trust you," her mouth was right by his ear and he could feel her speaking. "Not just that I can trust you to do what you said you would do. It isn’t enough to trust you to be a soldier. I mean that I can I can trust you to do the right thing. I like that you care so much about your team. You care so much, about everyone, even when they make you crazy. I like your eyes and I love your smile. And yes, I like that I can feel you. I like how warm you are and how gentle you can be. But if it was someone else whose skin I could feel, they wouldn't be here like this. I want you here for all the other reasons, not just that."

Shiro inhaled and stopped himself from saying something stupid. He had no idea what was going to come out of his mouth if he started to speak so he turned her face to his and kissed her instead. He tried to put the things he couldn't organize into words into that kiss. When he finally pulled away, she was blinking up at him.

"Do that again but slower," Allura said.

"Slower?"

"I don't know how to kiss you back. Slower. Help me figure it out."

Shiro laughed and pressed his hips down against her.

“I like you too, for the record,” he said and he kissed her once, softly. She smiled and returned it. A soft kiss on his lips. They traded kisses back and forth a few times.

She ran her hands over his shoulders and down his back. He had expected that his scars would make him self conscious but she didn’t seem to notice them. Had she ever mentioned them? His back was a mess of raised tissue and poorly healed skin. Some of the scars were still red and angry like they had just happened and others had faded to pale shadows. Allura didn’t mention them.

“Stand up,” she said.

“I’m comfortable here,” Shiro told her.

She was stretched out under him and he didn’t want to move.

“You’re wearing too many clothes, it isn’t acceptable,” she said.

“Oh, that,” he said.

“Up,” she said pushing on his chest without any real force. He pushed himself up with extended arms but kept his lower body pressed against her. She looked at him and licked her lips. He forgot how to breathe again.

She ran both hands down his chest until she could tuck her fingers under his waist band. She schooled her expression into something serious and said in a diplomat’s voice, “You do see the problem here.”

“There are worse problems,” he said.

“This is one we’re going to solve right now.”

This time when she pushed him, she did put force behind it. She had her hands braced on his hips and was strong enough to lift him up off her. He laughed and scrambled to catch himself before he fell over. He was still laughing when she succeeded in backing him up off the bed so she could unbutton his pants.

He stood where she had put him and tried not to think too much. It was madness that he was here at all. She was so far out of his league that it was absurd to imagine this even when it was actually happening. Her hair fell around her and he ran his hands through it, pushing it away from her face so he could see her when she tilted her head back to smile at him.

He stopped having to try and keep his thoughts quiet as she pulled off the rest of his clothes and he kicked them off. She ran her hands over him and he shivered. She was very gentle. She was too gentle but he didn’t want to say anything that might make her stop.

“Not what I was expecting,” she told him.

“Shit. I hadn’t thought about that,” he said.

“It’s not so different that we can’t figure it out,” she told him. He might have asked questions but she stopped him before he could.

She took him into her mouth and he let his eyes fall shut. She sucked gently, she was still so gentle. Her hands wandered over his thighs and stomach as she bobbed her head. Slow but stronger and deeper each time. He touched her hair and watched her through half shut eyes.

She was very good or maybe he was just losing his mind this fast because it was her. Allura glanced up at him with those bright blue eyes and his thoughts scattered. She had her mouth on his cock and was watching him so carefully that he wasn’t even sure what she was seeing because it couldn’t possibly be him. No one would look at him like that.

“You need to stop doing that,” he said.

“Why?” she asked with her lips still touching him.

“Because I am not ready to be done yet, come here,” he said. He pulled her up and she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back when he leaned in to ask for one. He held her close and tight. She was still dressed and he pushed her shirt up and off, only breaking the kiss long enough to pull it over her head.

By the time he had backed her up to the bed, he’d gotten rid of the track pants too. She shivered and pressed herself in close to him so her body brushed against his over and over again. He held her close and when they collapsed in against the pillows, he settled back on top of her.

Allura was less demanding now that she had so much skin to explore. Shiro just had to nudge her and she did anything he asked for. Flat on her back again, wrapped up in the blankets and pillows, her legs spread so he could run his hand all the way down her stomach and find her wet and sensitive. She gasped at the first touch.

“Yes?” he asked.

She nodded, “Please.”

He kissed his way down her neck and then back up as he explored by touch alone. She shivered and murmured as he experimented to find what she liked. Making her moan was far easier than he’d expected. His fingers slid inside her and she gasped. He rubbed slow circles against her and she muttered his name.

Pushing her over the edge into an orgasm just took a little bit of pressure and quick hard circles. He had her half pinned with his own body against her side. She came with a little cry and shudder that ran through her whole body. She blinked at him a few times and he smiled at her before he kissed her.

“I want you to do that again,” she said.

“I want to do something else,” he said.

“Ok,” she said.

“It sounds weird when you say ok,” he told her.

“O-K,” she said again in a more formal tone.

Shiro kissed her again and then pulled her so that they could find another position. He liked having her lying back under him and she was perfectly content to settle there and smile up at him. She held onto him and put his hands where she wanted them to be.

She winced a little as he slid into her. She was warm and wet and far tighter than he had expected.

“Ok?” he asked.

“It’s weird when you say it too,” she gasped.

“Allura?”

“Yes. I’m just fine. It’s been a little while and you’re not quite the right shape. Give me a moment,” she said. He felt her body shift around him and it was such a bizarre sensation that he couldn’t even move until she was done. She shifted her hips and flashed him a grin as he sank the rest of the way inside her. It was only a moment before she said, “Better.”

Shiro leaned into her and she sighed and pressed back into the touch, her hips lifting up to meet his. They fumbled a bit as they found a rhythm but neither of them cared much. Once they were moving together, Shiro let go of every other thought and let the entire world narrow down to her.

Her skin, her hair, the soft little sound she made when she liked something, her hands on his arms and in his hair. He kissed her mouth, her neck, along her shoulder. He held her close. So close. He could feel her breathing and every shift of her body.

She came before he did and she arched up into him and pulled him along with her. She tightened and around him and her hand in his hair clenched into a fist and they both gasped. His eyes fluttered open to find her nose to nose with him, smiling and breathing hard.

“Hi,” he said.

“We should do that more often,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He caught her face in both hands and kissed her hard.

“You’re staying here tonight,” she said when the kiss broke again. She ran her finger along his jaw.

“Bossy.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and rolled her eyes. When she spoke again her voice was syrupy sweet and she fluttered her eyelashes at him, “Please stay with me.”

“There is no where else I want to be,” Shiro said.

### Heart

Allura stood on the bridge and looked out at space. It was a digital projection but it was a good one it looked real and it updated in real time to show her what was whizzing by in the distance. She heard Shiro coming but didn't turn to look at him until he reached up and ran his finger along her ear, making her twitch and reach out to shove him. He caught her hand and held onto it as he settled in against the rail so he was facing away from the expanse of the galaxy that she was staring at. He laced his fingers with hers and smiled.

"Do you think we can win?" she asked him.

"Yes."

"You say it so simply," she said.

"Fine. Maybe we won't win but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight like we can,” he said.

“Hm,” she said.

“There's this parable, an old story that gets passed around in email forwards and children's books. About this little boy walking along a beach. He picks up the starfish that have been washed up into the sand and throws them back into the ocean. One day an old man asks him why he bothers. He can't save them all. 'What you're doing doesn't matter.' The little boy picks up another one and throws it back into the water and says, 'It mattered to that one,' and he leaves the old man to stare at the sea while he goes back to work," Shiro said.

Allura looked up at him and he smiled at her and continued speaking, "I'm ok with being the boy on the beach. Maybe we don't win but any lives we save on the way are worth the fight. I'd rather be the boy on the beach than the man in the arena."

She squeezed his hand with hers.

"You are. You're the hero of the story. Always," she said.

"If I'm the hero, then what are you?"

"The princess in waiting for a planet that does not exist."

Shiro looked at her and cradled her hand in both of his. Softer than he had been.

"Pretend I didn't say that," she said. "In your story, who am I? I will not be the cynical man, give me another character."

Shiro took a step towards her. She didn't look away from him. His expression was still soft, the expanse of the galaxy behind him just made her more aware of how private this moment was. He didn't look at other people the way he was looking at her. He was soft and kind and careful with her in ways that he wasn't with the rest of the universe.

"You're the heart," he said.

"Heart?"

"The heart of what comes next. Even if we both die in this war, even if we all die in this war, someone else will win it. And that galaxy, the one that comes after Zarkon and his empire? That galaxy will be kind and good. Strong and bright and with a true sense of justice and mercy. I will do everything that I can to make sure that we're both there to see those worlds build their future in your image. You're the heart. The future will follow your strength, your light. You're not the princess of a dead world. You're the queen of the one that hasn't arrived yet."

Allura felt tears welling up in her eyes. She punched him in the arm, hard enough to make him stumble to the side, "You're ridiculous." She had hit the metal arm because she hadn’t wanted to hurt him and she shook her hand out. Her hand ached.

"Maybe," he said standing back up and leaning towards her as though she hadn't just punched him.

"You are ridiculous," she said again.

"I'm right," he said.

"You're not, I'm not that important," she said.

Shiro leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead then another to her cheek and then finally one to her mouth. She pressed her entire body into the kiss.

"You are that important," he said into her mouth.

"So are you," she told him.

Then she kissed him again.

 


End file.
